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My opinion, the biggest area where he's fallen short has been continuing to attempt to compromise. The GOP made it crystal clear very early that they would not do anything to compromise with Obama and lo and behold, they kept that promise. Obama kept trying to work with them and made concessions well after it had become clear they'd just take, not give anything in return, then ask for more.

Obama has conceded that Guantanamo will not close anytime soon. “Obviously I haven’t been able to make the case right now, and without Congress’s cooperation, we can’t do it,” he said this month in an interview with the Associated Press. “That doesn’t mean I stop making the case.”

We have some problems with trying the terrorists. Most of the evidence isn't court-worthy, and it's classified, which causes problems. The innocent detainees have nowhere to go - no one wants to take them. Obama honestly tried, and he got blocked by congress.

Nobody really objected, either. The longer Gitmo went on without torture incidents, the less the public cared.

So... triage? He did try, which is a hell of a lot better than just lying.

On May 20, 2009, as part of a war-funding request, the Senate voted 90 to 6 against appropriating $80 million to close Guantanamo. “Americans don’t want some of the most dangerous men alive coming here,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the floor of the chamber, adding that he commended Senate Democrats for “fulfilling their oversight responsibilities.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that during Romney’s four-year term as Massachusetts governor, the number of jobs went up 61,000. By contrast, the number of jobs under Obama has dropped by 1.86 million. Under Romney's leadership and economic reforms the Massachusetts unemployment rate went from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent. Obama has us stranded at 8% and went almost to 10.

When Romney entered office in January 2003, Massachusetts was shedding jobs at a faster rate than the country as a whole. The state had ridden the dot-com boom to greater riches, but when the bubble burst, it struggled to stem the losses.

The state had lost about 158,000 jobs, or 4.7 percent of its workforce, from the first quarter of 2001 to the month Romney took office, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In early 2004, a year into Romney’s term, Massachusetts began to stop losing jobs. The state then added jobs every year until Romney stepped down in early 2007. All the data is right in that link above.

In the mid-eighties, a European retail outfit called Makro, a kind of continental Costco, was looking for an executive to help run its U.S. business, and it called a Boston supermarket executive named Tom Stemberg, inviting him to tour a pilot store outside of Philadelphia. The store didn’t impress him much, but he noticed that the office-supply aisle was absolutely packed with shoppers. He told the Makro executives to abandon their model and concentrate solely on office supplies; when they declined, he decided to give it a try himself. Boston business is a small world, and when he went looking for a venture-­capital partner, he eventually found his way to Mitt Romney and his new $37 million fund. “Most V.C.’s thought it was ridiculous,” Stemberg says. “Mitt was highly unusual in that he went to the research level to study it.”

The trouble with the idea, to Romney’s subordinates at Bain Capital, was that the small businesses Stemberg needed to draw weren’t accustomed to visiting a store for office supplies; they got them from separate vendors, some who ­delivered—one supplier for pens and paper, one for printer cartridges, and so on. “Some of us were worried that we needed to change consumer behavior,” recalls Robert F. White, one of the firm’s managing directors.Romney persisted. As members of the group surveyed more and more small businesses in suburban Massachusetts, they discovered that if you asked a small-business manager how much he spent on office supplies, he would give you a low estimate and tell you it wasn’t worth it to send someone in a car to buy them. But if you asked the bookkeepers, you got a far higher number, about five times as much—high enough, Romney and Stemberg thought, to get them to come to the store. The idea became Staples. Romney’s Bain Capital colleagues were soon helping to select a cheaper, more efficient computer system for the first store; they were helping stock the shelves themselves. As Staples succeeded, and began to expand, they looked at analytics for everything—the small-business population around a proposed store site, traffic flow—and gamed out exactly how big a customer would need to be before it demanded delivery. Romney sat on the Staples board for years, and his company made nearly seven times what it invested in the start-up.

Bain company (under romney) has a 70% success rate for companies over 8 years, and 78% success rate for over 5 years. (by success I mean didn't go bankrupt) The business model is to take over a failing company and make it successful. That is because you get far more money over a long period of time than you get by breaking it up and selling the parts. But somehow, the 20-30% of buisnesses that went under and were broken and sold for parts are the only ones you hear reported.

How does it work under President Obama?

Obama proved that no matter how much money you shovel into a company like Solyndra, if the company can't sell product made by the first factory, it still can't sell product made by the second factory either.

"Every day that you build this expanded facility, as you fill orders for solar panels to ship around the world, you’re demonstrating that the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith -- not anymore. It’s not some abstract possibility for science fiction movies or a distant future -- 10 years down the road or 20 years down the road. It’s happening right now. The future is here. We’re poised to transform the ways we power our homes and our cars and our businesses. And we’re poised to lead our competitors in the development of new technologies and products and businesses. And we are poised to generate countless new jobs, good-paying middle-class jobs, right here in the United States of America."

"That’s the promise of clean energy. And thanks to the men and women here today -- and the innovators and the workers all across America -- it’s a promise that we’ve already begun to fulfill. "

A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.

As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?

“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.”

With the loan guarantee in hand, Solyndra built a second, seven-acre factory with 19 loading docks. As part of the expansion, Gronet and fellow managers hoped to cut costs by speeding up the automated assembly. To do so, they bought a custom-made assembly tool from VDL, a Dutch company. The company had never built that kind of equipment, but it promised the assembly tool would arrive in the summer of 2010. By that time, Gronet had been pushed out as chief executive. Workers told The Post in interviews that they were shocked that summer when Harrison, newly installed as CEO, told them that sales projections used to justify the new factory to federal agencies had been far too optimistic.

And internal emails uncovered by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that were shared exclusively with ABC News show the Obama administration was keenly monitoring the progress of the loan, even as analysts were voicing serious concerns about the risk involved.

"This deal is NOT ready for prime time," one White House budget analyst wrote in a March 10, 2009 email, nine days before the administration formally announced the loan.

"If you guys think this is a bad idea, I need to unwind the W[est] W[ing] QUICKLY," wrote Ronald A. Klain, who was chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, in another email sent March 7, 2009. The "West Wing" is the portion of the White House complex that holds the offices of the president and his top staffers. Klain declined comment to ABC News

Obama the businessman had no experience at all. When he came into office in the midst of a horrible economic crisis, he spent the first two years on Health Care and not jobs. He saw his opportunity (Majorities in congress and the senate) and he knew he could pass the legislation. So he took it. A great thing for the movement of more government control over daily life (It takes a village) but a horrible choice for the economy.

Obama proved with Solyndra that it takes more than opportunity. It takes more than roads or the internet. Success is created not with money (Although if you told me you were going to invest 555 million into a company, I would laugh at the asshole who would suggest that company could possibly go under after that!) It is created by hard work and smart business decisions. Could Solyndra have used that money to lower the price of their product, advertise, and force a foothold in the market rather than buy a second factory with glass walls that turn opaque at the push of the button? Perhaps. But even if you believe that government should be doing that - you should also be able to admit that Obama has proven he is not the right person to be implementing that type of endeavor.

Ease up with the citations, would you? It's difficult enough to follow all your logical arguments but to have to click so many links and verify all the information you provide... It's much easier if I just dismiss you out of hand in a pithy gesture of aloof superiority, gnome sane?

I'm impressed with your ability to read only on what has Obama fallen short and left out the portion of that both parties agree upon. The idea that Obama has somehow hurt the economy is certainly not agreed upon by both parties, though perhaps if you had simply stuck with the Obama Administration giving money to Solyndra you might have had some agreement.

As for the idea that Romney while Governor of Massachusetts reduced unemployment, according to FactCheck.org

Yes — Massachusetts’ unemployment rate went from 5.6 percent to 4.6 percent under Romney. But — the state’s unemployment rate was slightly lower than the national rate when he took office, and was roughly the same as the national rate when he left office

Now, on to the argument over jobs and that Obama and his policies have somehow cost this country 1.86 million jobs. In fact, I can't find any sort of information on even Romney himself saying that Obama has lost any more than 500,000+ jobs (I think the actual number is like 552,000) so this piece of fact just has me confused. Since the spirit of the argument (if not the actual numbers given) obviously indicates that you believe Obama has been president over a decrease in the number of jobs, I would have to agree with that. I, however, will point you to the fact that 2011 saw the largest increase in private sectors jobs since 2005 and the largest overall increase (when including both public and private) since 2006 (Source). Now as to if this is entirely due to the president and his policies, probably not, but then again, losing jobs isn't all because of the president either (I seem to recall something about his huge recession we were in under this other president that came before Obama).